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Fausto Coppi
Born
Road cycling, Italy. Coppi's rivalry with the older Gino Bartali split Italian cycling fans in the late 1940s and 1950s. Bartali won the Tour de France in 1938 and 1948, Coppi in 1949 and 1952, and in 1949 Coppi became the first rider to win the Giro and the Tour in the same year. The famous 1952 photograph of the two passing a water bottle, with no agreement on who handed it to whom, sums up how closely their careers were tied.
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Wilt Chamberlain
Born
Basketball, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Chamberlain set records that still stand, including 100 points in a game and 50.4 points a game over the 1961–62 season, yet his teams lost to Bill Russell's Boston Celtics in seven of their eight playoff series. The contrast between Chamberlain's individual numbers and Russell's eleven titles shaped decades of argument about what makes a great player, and the two were friends off the court.
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Raymond Poulidor
Born
Road cycling, France. Poulidor finished on the Tour de France podium eight times without ever wearing the yellow jersey, often behind Jacques Anquetil. Their shoulder-to-shoulder climb of the Puy de Dôme in 1964, which left Anquetil leading the Tour by just 14 seconds and winning it by 55, is one of the sport's best-known duels, and Poulidor's popularity as the "eternal second" outlasted many of the winners.
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Muhammad Ali
Born
Boxing, United States. Ali and Joe Frazier fought three times. Frazier won the first, the "Fight of the Century" in 1971, handing Ali his first professional defeat; Ali won the rematch in 1974 and the "Thrilla in Manila" in 1975, which ended when Frazier's corner stopped the fight before the 15th round. Ali's insults before their fights were real and hurt Frazier, and Ali later said he regretted them.
More about Muhammad Ali5
Chris Evert
Tennis, United States. Evert and Martina Navratilova met 80 times between 1973 and 1988, including 60 finals, with Navratilova leading 43-37. Evert's baseline consistency against Navratilova's serve and volley made every match a contest of styles, and when Navratilova pulled ahead in the early 1980s Evert switched to a larger racket and changed her training to compete. The two have been close friends for decades.
More about Chris Evert6
Björn Borg
Born
Tennis, Sweden. Borg and John McEnroe played 14 times, finishing level at 7-7. Their 1980 Wimbledon final, which Borg won for his fifth straight title after losing a fourth-set tie-break 18-16, is regarded as one of the greatest matches ever played; McEnroe beat him in the Wimbledon and US Open finals of 1981, and Borg, aged 26, effectively stopped playing the tour soon after.
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James Hunt
Born
Formula One, Britain. Hunt won the 1976 world title by a single point from Niki Lauda, in a season interrupted by Lauda's near-fatal crash at the Nürburgring and settled in heavy rain at the Japanese Grand Prix, where Lauda withdrew on safety grounds and Hunt finished third. The two had shared a flat early in their careers and stayed friends, despite very different public images.
More about James Hunt8
Tom Watson (golfer)
Born
Golf, United States. Watson beat Jack Nicklaus head to head in several of the biggest moments of the late 1970s and early 1980s: the 1977 Masters, the 1977 Open at Turnberry, where they played the last two rounds together and Watson won by one shot in the "Duel in the Sun", and the 1982 US Open at Pebble Beach, decided by Watson's chip-in at the 17th. Nicklaus finished second each time, and Watson's peak years are largely the story of beating him.
More about Tom Watson (golfer)9
Sebastian Coe
Born
Athletics, Britain. Coe and Steve Ovett rarely raced each other outside championships, which made their meetings events. At the 1980 Moscow Olympics Ovett won the 800 metres, Coe's stronger event, and Coe won the 1,500 metres, where Ovett was favourite. In August 1981 the mile world record changed hands three times in ten days, Coe, then Ovett, then Coe again.
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Alain Prost
Born
Formula One, France. Prost and Ayrton Senna were team-mates at McLaren in 1988 and 1989 and won 15 of the 16 races in 1988 between them. The world title was decided by collisions at Suzuka in both 1989, in Prost's favour, and 1990, when Prost had moved to Ferrari and Senna drove into him at the first corner. Prost's calculated racing against Senna's all-out speed defined the sport for several seasons, and the two reconciled before Senna's death in 1994.
More about Alain Prost11
Magic Johnson
Born
Basketball, Los Angeles Lakers. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird met in the 1979 NCAA final, which Johnson's Michigan State won, then joined the Lakers and Celtics the same year and met in three NBA Finals, 1984, 1985 and 1987, with the Lakers winning two. Their contrasting teams and styles are widely credited with reviving the NBA's popularity in the 1980s, and they later wrote a joint book about the rivalry and their friendship.
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Jimmy White
Born
Snooker, England. White reached the World Championship final six times and lost all six, four of them to Stephen Hendry between 1990 and 1994. The 1994 final went to the deciding frame, 18-17, after White missed a black off its spot, and the rivalry between White's attacking flair and Hendry's relentless break-building made both the most watched players of the era.
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Annika Sörenstam
Born
Golf, Sweden. When Australia's Karrie Webb overtook her as the LPGA's dominant player in 1999 and 2000, Sörenstam rebuilt her fitness and short game, shot the tour's first round of 59 in 2001 and went on to lead the money list for five straight years. The two finished with 17 major titles between them, ten for Sörenstam and seven for Webb, and their contest set the standard for the women's game in that era.
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Valentino Rossi
Born
Motorcycle racing, Italy. Rossi won nine world titles and had a series of rivalries across two decades, first with Max Biaggi, then Sete Gibernau, Casey Stoner and Jorge Lorenzo. The sharpest came with Marc Márquez in 2015, when the two clashed at Sepang; Rossi was penalised to the back of the grid for the final race and lost the title to Lorenzo by five points. Each rival forced him to change machines, teams or racing lines to stay competitive.
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Kelly Slater
Surfing, United States. Slater returned to the full tour in 2002 after six world titles and found Hawaii's Andy Irons, who won the next three world titles, 2002 to 2004, often beating Slater in heats and finals, including the 2003 title decided at Pipeline. Slater responded with titles in 2005 and 2006 and five more later; both have spoken about how bitter the rivalry was at its height and about reconciling before Irons's death in 2010.
More about Kelly Slater16
Roger Federer
Born
Tennis, Switzerland. Federer and Rafael Nadal played 40 times between 2004 and 2019, with Nadal leading 24-16, and met in nine Grand Slam finals. Nadal's heavy topspin to Federer's one-handed backhand was the defining tactical problem of Federer's career, and his late-career changes, a bigger racket and a more aggressive backhand, were aimed largely at that matchup. Their 2008 Wimbledon final is often called the greatest match ever played.
More about Roger Federer17
Peyton Manning
American football, Indianapolis Colts and Denver Broncos. Peyton Manning and Tom Brady met 17 times, with Brady winning 11, but Manning won three of their four AFC Championship Games, the matches that decided who reached the Super Bowl. Manning's pre-snap, no-huddle approach against Brady's New England system, built with coach Bill Belichick, gave the league its defining quarterback contest of the 2000s and 2010s.
More about Peyton Manning18
Allyson Felix
Born
Athletics, United States. Felix's individual Olympic career was shaped by Jamaica's Veronica Campbell-Brown, who beat her to 200 metres gold in Athens in 2004 and Beijing in 2008, both times with Felix second, while Felix won three straight world 200 metres titles in between. She finally took the Olympic title in London in 2012, with Campbell-Brown fourth, closing out one of the sprint events' longest head-to-heads.
More about Allyson Felix19
Novak Djokovic
Born
Tennis, Serbia. Djokovic and Rafael Nadal played 60 times, the most of any men's rivalry in the Open era, with Djokovic leading 31-29. Their 2012 Australian Open final lasted five hours and 53 minutes, the longest Grand Slam final, and Djokovic's return of serve and flexibility in defence gave him answers to Nadal's topspin that few others found, though Nadal still beat him eight times at the French Open.
More about Novak Djokovic20
Lionel Messi
Born
Football, Barcelona, Paris Saint-Germain, Inter Miami and Argentina. From 2008 to 2018 Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo shared the Ballon d'Or ten times in eleven years, and from 2009 to 2018 they faced each other in El Clásico between Barcelona and Real Madrid. The contest pushed both to scoring rates the game had not seen, with each passing 50 goals in a season several times, and Messi finished with a record eight Ballons d'Or to Ronaldo's five.
More about Lionel Messi21
Lewis Hamilton
Born
Formula One, Britain. Hamilton's career has had two defining rivals. At Mercedes he fought team-mate Nico Rosberg for the title from 2014 to 2016, winning two of three before Rosberg won in 2016 and retired. In 2021 he and Max Verstappen arrived at the final race level on points, and Verstappen won the title on the last lap in Abu Dhabi after a disputed safety-car decision, denying Hamilton an eighth championship.
More about Lewis Hamilton22
Ariarne Titmus
Born
Swimming, Australia. Titmus beat Katie Ledecky in the 400 metres freestyle at the 2019 World Championships, then again for Olympic gold in Tokyo and in Paris in 2024, while Ledecky kept winning the longer 800 and 1,500 metres. The rivalry pushed the 400 metres world record lower, and in Paris it became a three-way race with Canada's Summer McIntosh, with Titmus taking gold ahead of both.
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